


She Bangs the Drums (the losing, losing, lost remix)

by Netgirl_y2k



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-22
Updated: 2011-06-22
Packaged: 2017-10-20 15:24:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/214192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netgirl_y2k/pseuds/Netgirl_y2k
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucy's tragedy is that she loves him, quite sincerely loves him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Bangs the Drums (the losing, losing, lost remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Losing](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/3602) by aralias. 



"He doesn't love you," the Doctor tells Lucy late one night when they are alone on the bridge of the Valiant.

Lucy turns away from him and gazes out of the window. She doesn't need the Doctor to tell her that. There was a time when she'd thought he loved her, when they'd stood on this very spot and he'd whispered _"Shall we decimate them"_ in her ear. But she's long since accepted what she is to Harry: the pretty, damaged consort that's the must have accessory for planetary dictators this season.

"I don't care," she says, staring down at the planet below, and she doesn't. Lucy's tragedy is that she loves him, quite genuinely loves him.

*

The first morning Lucy appears with a black eye, the Doctor's eyes widen in surprise. So much for him knowing Harry better than anyone.

"What happened?" he asks her while Harry harasses the help.

"I told him we should kill you."

Lucy meets the Doctor's eyes and for the first time she sincerely understands why Harry is determined to destroy him. She wants to slap that look of infinite compassion off his face.

Harry's hands slap down unexpectedly on Lucy's shoulders. She flinches and he roughly pulls her back against him. "I see you two kids are getting to know each other. Lucy's great. Isn't Lucy great, Doctor? In fact, do you know who she reminds me of? Jo Grant."

Harry squeezes Lucy's shoulders, frustrated at the Doctor's lack of response. "Did I tell you that the Toclafane found good old Jo, no? Well, they did. Perhaps I'll have her brought up to the Valiant, that's is, if there's enough of her left."

Taunting the Doctor about Jo Grant amuses Harry for a few days, and when the Doctor's lack of a response starts to bore him Lucy gets a fetching split lip.

*

The destruction of Japan cheers Harry up, the tears the Doctor sheds more so. He takes Lucy to his bed, and the only thing worse than sleeping with him is being shunned in favour of whichever human prisoner he's taken a shine to this week.

*

Lucy talks to the Doctor quite openly now. Harry regards her as part of the furniture and the staff treat her with nothing but contempt. They should be grateful, she thinks. She could quite easily have them sent down to die on the planet below.

"He took me to Utopia for our honeymoon."

"What was it like?" the Doctor asks. He's hungry for any little details of Harry that Lucy is willing to part with.

"It was freezing. There were furnaces burning day and night but it was still so cold, cold and dark. Just me, Harry and all that's left of the human race - mutilated, childlike and waiting to die. Harry saved them, he brought them here, gave them back the Earth."

A great dry sob heaves from the Doctor's throat and it strikes Lucy that the Doctor hadn't known what the Toclafane were until now. And Harry was right. It is breaking his hearts.

The Doctor weeps for a day, with the Toclafane giggling around his head and Harry sweeping Lucy around the bridge in an elaborate waltz.

"You made him cry!" Harry declares joyfully, sweeping Lucy up in his arms and kissing her passionately. It's almost like they are back on Utopia, back in the days when they were king and queen of that sad little planet.

But the Doctor's made of sterner stuff than that, and soon all Lucy has to cling to is the memory of making Harry happy just for that one day.

*

Harry's face and the front of his shirt are splattered with dark blood and he won't stop smiling as they stroll onto the bridge. All Lucy really wants is to take a long bath and get Sarah Jane Smith's blood out of her hair and the stench of death out of her nostrils, but Harry wants her with him when he tells the Doctor.

"I do get bored of Captain Harkness," he says. "I thought it might be fun to kill someone who didn't get up again. And it was fun, fun, fun, fun. Although I never had Miss Smith down as such a screamer. Tell him about the screaming, Lucy, wasn't it good? Lucy? Lucy!"

"Oh, it was nice…" says Lucy vaguely, staring at the blood on her hands. It's the same colour as her nail varnish, how odd.

"Lucy…" the Doctor pleads as soon as Harry gets distracted and walks away. He's starting to sound as old as he looks.

"I won't let you kill him," Lucy says, watching as her husband surveys his kingdom.

"I won't kill him. I'll take him away, look after him. I'll make sure he can't hurt anybody."

Lucy looks at the Doctor coldly. "You know that would kill him as well as I do."

*

Harry is never going to kill the Doctor. He needs him too much. Dominating the planet, unleashing the Toclafane, systematically destroying Lucy, none of it matters unless the Doctor is here to watch.

Lucy is slightly ashamed that it's taken her a year to realise this. Then again, no one has ever accused her of being that bright.

"Doctor," Lucy joins in with chanting, bracing herself for Harry's wrath. He doesn't tolerate betrayal, least of all from his own wife. But he doesn't turn to her, probably doesn't even notice her, focused as he is on the Doctor. And in that moment, more than any other over the last eighteen months, Lucy knows how he feels about her.

The second time Lucy says "Doctor" it's with conviction.

*

The gun skids to a halt at Lucy's feet and she shoots because no-one is watching her and because she's the only one who can.

She shoots to spare Harry a life that will destroy him as surely as he has destroyed Lucy.

She shoots to take revenge upon him for all the horrors she's witnessed.

She shoots because he doesn't love her and never will.

She shoots because Utopia broke something in her mind and she's not really responsible for her actions.

The Doctor howls, and handsome Captain Harkness takes the gun from her. Thankfully, he doesn't ask her why she did it. No one does. Lucy wouldn't know how to answer if they ever did.

*

Four months after killing the only man she's ever loved, Lucy's almost getting used to living last year over again. Still, she's somehow unsurprised when she returns home one evening to find a tall blue box dominating most of her front hall and the Doctor sitting with his feet up on her kitchen table.

"Lucy Saxon! I was expecting to find you in a jail cell, or at the very least in a hospital with the walls painted soothing colours."

Lucy doesn't tell him that the security tapes show her shooting Harry mere moments after he shot the American president, or that the Daily Mail has hailed her as a national hero for doing so. "Tea?" she offers.

"Don't mind if I do."

So Lucy brews a pot of tea, and they sit and drink. She tells the Doctor to get his feet off her table, and he does. It's almost civilised.

"What do you want?"

"I want to see how you are?" The Doctor is almost as good a liar as Harry had been, but Lucy had been able to see through her husband and she can see through him.

"Liar."

The Doctor had been rocking his chair back on two legs like a naughty schoolboy. Now he lets it slam down and stares at Lucy. She can't help but shiver.

"You killed the Master."

"I did."

"Why?" His eyes are cold, emotionless, like Harry's.

Lucy could tell him one of the myriad lies she's told UNIT, the police, the doctors, her parents, herself. But she likes to think that she and the Doctor understand each other, two people who love Harry and have suffered for that love, and she doesn't want to lie to him.

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"What did you want to hear, Doctor? That Harry and I had a plan, that he was hidden away in a watch or a ring, that we could bring him back?"

Lucy means it as a joke, but as she takes a demure sip of her tea she catches the Doctor's eyes and knows that was exactly what he was hoping for. She smirks over her teacup.

"If there was a plan, don't you think I'd have implemented it by now?"

"I'd hoped not."

They drink the rest of their tea in silence. The Doctor asks for biscuits, Lucy obliges, and the Doctor does the washing up.

"Do you want to come with me?" he asks.

"No."

"I could make you."

"Yes, you could." There's a standoff and Lucy breaks first. "But you won't."

"You don't know what I'm capable of."

"I know exactly what you're capable of. Harry told me about Gallifrey."

"Don't say that name," the Doctor says dangerously. Then he stops, closes his eyes, calms himself. "I could take you anywhere, places where the human race is surviving, thriving. Places where the sun always shines, where it's always warm. Places full of life!"

Lucy laughs at that. "You want to fix me. You couldn't fix Harry, so you want to fix me, the poor little broken human. You and Harry are so alike."

"I am nothing like the Master!"

Lucy reaches up and strokes the Doctor's cheek. "So alike, I sometimes wonder if I'd met you first, if I'd fallen for..." Lucy's thumb brushes over the Doctor's lips. "But no. Goodbye Doctor."

"Goodbye, Lucy Saxon."

Before he leaves, the Doctor fishes deep in the pockets of his overcoat and deposits a scrap of paper on the kitchen table.

"What's that?"

"The telephone number of a good psychiatrist."


End file.
